LONDON - Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on Thursday attacked the "spin and hype" behind U.S. and British allegations of banned Iraqi weapons used to justify war against Saddam Hussein.

Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said the US-led war on Iraq was not justified. (AFP/File/Laura Boushnak)

Blix, who said this week he believed Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, told BBC radio that the United States and Britain "over-interpreted" intelligence about Baghdad's weapons programs.

In response, the British government said it stood by the case it had made to the public for going to war.

Blix compared London and Washington to medieval witch-hunters, saying they convinced themselves on the basis of evidence which was later discredited, including forged documents about alleged attempts to buy uranium for nuclear weapons.

"In the Middle Ages when people were convinced there were witches they certainly found them. This is a bit risky," said Blix, whose inspectors left Iraq on the eve of war in March after just a few months of inspections.

Blix said a pre-war British dossier on Iraqi weapons "leads the reader to conclusions that are a little further-reaching" than was the case.

"What in a way stands accused is the culture of spin, the culture of hyping.... Advertisers will advertise a refrigerator in terms that we don't quite believe in, but we expect governments to be more serious and have more credibility," he said.

"BEST ASSESSMENT"

Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said a recent report on the September dossier by parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee had concluded that the dossier was "the best assessment of the intelligence available at the time."

That committee, however, also concluded that parts of intelligence were presented in a misleading way.

Allegations in the dossier that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons at 45 minutes' notice have come under scrutiny at a judicial inquiry, which has revealed that the claim referred only to short-range battlefield munitions, not long-range missiles as was widely believed.

Before ordering the invasion that toppled Saddam, President Bush talked of an imminent threat posed by Iraqi weapons as a prime justification for war.

Blair put Saddam's alleged weapons program at the heart of his case for supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March.

But five months after Saddam's overthrow, no banned weapons have been found.

Bush and Blair have said the search will take time and that evidence will eventually be uncovered.

"The patience that they require for themselves now was not anything that they wanted to give to us," said Blix, whose inspectors were forced to pull out of Iraq in March after just three and a half months' work.

He said the few "minor things" which his teams had uncovered in Iraq were more likely to have been "debris from the past" than "tips of the iceberg" of an existing weapons program.

Blix's comments have been echoed by his successor Demetrius Perricos, who told Reuters it was becoming "more and more difficult to believe stocks (of WMD) were there" in Iraq.

Additional reporting by Katherine Baldwin

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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